A Changed Man
by msenterprise
Summary: This is the story how one woman changed one man. LMHG.


Title: "A Changed Man"

Author: Magen

Rating: T

Disclaimer: JK Rowling is the queen and sole owner of all things Potter. I am merely playing with her toys. I get no money for this, just simply the pleasure of writing a hopefully good story.

A/N: All authors love feedback. Positive and constructive criticism only. This is a ONESHOT with no hope of a sequel. I have limited free time and don't always use it to write. Enjoy!

Hermione sighed as she wearily tied her curly hair back in order to wash her face. She had already changed into her favorite shirt she had long ago 'borrowed' from her husband and a pair of emerald satin pajama pants. As she cleansed her face, she thought back on her day.

She had received a letter from her oldest child telling her and her husband about his first week at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She laughed at his account of his life-long friends, James Potter and Kaitlyn Weasley's first run in with Peeves, the troublemaking ghost of the school. It was hard for her to believe that her son Nathaniel was old enough to be in his first year.

She glanced up in the mirror as she dried her face on a towel when she heard her husband sigh as he leaned on the doorway of her bathroom. "She finally decide to go to sleep?" Hermione asked as she rubbed a moisturizing lotion on her face.

"Only after I had to read three separate stories, one of them twice," he said as he tiredly ran a hand over his face.

"And you loved every minute of it," she replied with a grin as she reached for her toothbrush and paste. Her husband grinned; knowing perfectly well that his three-year-old daughter, Celia, had him wrapped around her little finger.

"How was your day?" he asked as he stepped into his dressing area to ready for bed.

"It was okay, didn't get everything done that I wanted to though. I did get Lucas to Ron and Pansy's for the night," she said, referring to their six-year-old son between brushes. "Ron's going to take them to his Quiddich practice tomorrow. Lucas can hardly wait to meet all of the Cannon's players," she said as she leaned over the sink spitting out the last of the toothpaste from her mouth. As she replaced the toothbrush in the holder, she gasped sharply as she suddenly felt hands gently caress her waist.

She immediately relaxed into her husband's embrace as he nuzzled his face into her neck, placing gentle kisses wherever his lips found flesh. She reached up and ran her hand into his long, pale golden hair. "Lucius," she breathed in pleasure as he suckled that particularly sensitive place in the hollow of her neck while running his hands over her smooth flesh under her shirt.

"I missed you," Lucius whispered as Hermione turned in his arms before claiming her mouth in a searing kiss.

"You were only gone two days," Hermione whispered when they finally broke for air. "Not that I'm complaining," she smiled in pleasure as she ran her hands over her husband's smooth bare chest.

"I know," he replied as he lifted his wife into his arms and carried her towards their bed. "But a day can seem like a lifetime, and I was gone two." As he gently laid her down, he proceeded to show Hermione just how much he missed her while he was away on business.

Sometime later, Hermione lay sated in her husband's arms, her head pillowed on Lucius' chest with him softly stroking the arm she had draped across his chest. Just before drifting off, Hermione felt her husband kiss the top of her head and whisper gently, "I love you, Hermione."

"I love you too, Lucius," she breathed with a gentle smile before surrendering to sleep.

As Lucius lay there watching his wife as she slept, he thought back on the way that his life had turned out – how he went from the muggle-hating Voldemort loyalist to traitor, eventually helping The Boy Who Lived defeat and kill the world's most evil wizard. It was due largely in part to the woman he now held in his arms.

Unbeknownst to her best friends, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, she had visited him in Azkaban during the summer between her fifth and sixth years at Hogwarts. 'In the vain attempt to gain information on the Dark Lord,' Lucius thought to himself. At least that's what he thought until he learned that Voldemort had no plans to rescue him from Azkaban.

Narcissa shared that little tidbit with him in one of her letters. She also wrote to tell him that their son, Draco, had become a Death Eater during that same summer and had been given the impossible task of killing the school's headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. If he failed at his task, Lucius knew that the Dark Lord would have no mercy on his son.

Even now, Lucius didn't know the exact details of all that had happened. He only knew that Severus Snape had been the one to cast the killing curse on the School's beloved headmaster. He learned this through Hermione Granger when she once again visited him in the summer before her seventh year. She also gave him the news that his wife, Narcissa, had been found dead, the victim of multiple Crucio curses given by Lord Voldemort himself in punishment for interfering with the directive given to Draco. She went on to say that Draco was missing and was presumed to either be in hiding with other Death Eaters or dead.

While those things had been devastating in their own right, it was her next words that completely changed his life. He couldn't remember everything about his stay in Azkaban, but he could this as though it had just happened moments ago.

_Lucius stared at Hermione through the clear door of his prison cell in numb shock attempting to grasp the news concerning the fate of his wife and son._

"_What I don't understand," Hermione said a few moments later, faint traces of confusion evident on her face, "is how you can remain loyal to Voldemort after he's left you here to rot, gave your son a task that he knew Draco wouldn't be able to carry out and would've quite possibly been killed attempting, and tortured your wife to death?" As she stood to slip a piece of paper under his cell door she continued. "That was the message left at your wife's body."_

_Lucius reached down and retrieved the parchment._ 'This is the fate that awaits all who oppose me.'

"_Mr. Malfoy," Hermione stated twice before she was able to make eye contact with him. "Your Dark Lord," she said with a sneer that would've made Draco proud, "doesn't care about just bloodlines as he did before. His actions over the past year have proven that. All he cares about is power and he will destroy ALL who oppose him, purebloods and muggleborns alike, or fail him, just like he did with your family," she said plainly._

_Lucius looked at her for brief moment before raising himself to his full height and sneered down his nose at her. "What does a mudbl-" Lucius started before being interrupted._

"_It's true, Lucius," Remus Lupin said from the shadows behind Hermione before Lucius could get started on a rant. "Hermione and I were some of the ones to find your wife's body."_

"_I'm curious," Hermione said with almost a clinical detachment, "just what he's doing to do with you, once he gets around to you? But then again, you would know better than I just what he does to those who disappoint him," she said in a voice that made chills go down his spine. Various memories of his and other's punishments at the hands of the Dark Lord flashed through his mind._

_Hermione watched in satisfaction as Lucius's face paled at the gravity of his situation. "At least this will give you something to think about," she said almost smugly._

"_Hermione," a soft voice said from a short distance behind her. "Your time is up."_

_Hermione glanced back at Tonks and nodded once before fixing her gaze back on Lucius. "Good day, Mister Malfoy."_

It was that conversation that made him start to think, really think about his life and the direction it was heading. And it was a decidedly grim future in which every situation he could conceive ended in his death or continued imprisonment, save one almost preposterous idea: him turning traitor by helping and possibly joining the Order of the Phoenix.

Lucius glanced down as Hermione shifted in her sleep, jerking him from his memories of the past. As he looked at her, he thought about all he did to prove to her, Harry, Ron, and the others that he wanted to "switch sides" and help them defeat Voldemort. He remembered how he directed them to another of the Dark Lord's horicruxes and told them all he knew of Nagini and the Dark Arts.

Before his thoughts could carry him further, a tinkling chime sounded in his and Hermione's bedchamber.

"Lucius," Hermione mumbled sleepily, "what is it?" she asked as he shifted her off his chest and rose from the bed.

"It's the ward I placed on Celia's door," he replied as he pulled on his black silk boxers from where they were thrown on the floor earlier. "I'll check on her," he volunteered as he put on his robe. "Go back to sleep, love," he said before giving her a gentle kiss. "I won't be long."

After Lucius had swept from the room, Hermione rose from the bed and reclothed herself in her pajamas that her husband had quickly divested her of earlier. As she readjusted the bed linens before climbing back in bed, Hermione thought of her husband. If someone had told her thirteen years ago that she would one day be Mrs. Lucius Malfoy, a contented wife and mother of three, she would've quite possibly laughed in their face. But the Lucius she knew then and the Lucius she knows now are completely different people.

The way that he lovingly cradled his sniffling daughter to his chest as he quietly returned to their room was evidence of that.

"See, there's Mummy," Lucius said softly as he rubbed Celia's back while sitting down on Hermione's side of the bed.

"Celia, honey, did you have a bad dream?" she asked as her daughter climbed from her father's lap and into hers. She immediately wrapped her arms around Celia and began to gently rock her back and forth as she felt her nod up and down against her chest. "Do you want to tell us about it?" Hermione asked gently while she pushed her daughter's dark blonde curly hair off her forehead.

Celia sniffed and wiped her nose on her nightgown sleeve, a habit she had picked up from her brothers. "You were hurt and Papa wouldn't help you," she said as fresh tears sprung to her eyes.

"Celia," Lucius said as he moved closer to his wife and child, "look at Mummy. Is she hurt?" He waited for her to finish her visual inspection of Hermione.

"No," came her tentative reply.

"No," he confirmed. "I love you, your mummy, and your brothers so much. I would never let anything hurt any of you and I will _always_ help. You know that, right?" Lucius asked as he tweaked Celia's nose, bringing a smile to her face. "That's my girl," he said with a grin.

"Come on, sweet pea," Hermione said as she rose from the bed. "Let's get you back to bed."

"Can I sleep with you?" Celia asked, a slight tremor in her voice.

"No," Lucius replied gently, ignoring the large doe eyes his daughter was giving him. "But I'll sit with you until you fall asleep," he said as he took her out of his wife's arms. "Now, say goodnight to Mummy."

"Goodnight, Mummy," Celia said as she hugged and kissed Hermione.

"Goodnight, sweet pea," Hermione said as she kissed her daughter on the forehead.

"I'll be back soon, love," Lucius whispered after placing a lingering kiss on his wife's lips.

Hermione smiled softly as she watched her husband carry their daughter from the room. 'Yep, my husband is definitely a changed man.'

_fin_


End file.
